Dear colleagues,

Please join us for the first session of the Alternative Worlds Seminar on 26 January. The seminar is free and open to all, but please email me at [log in to unmask] to reserve a seat.
I’d be grateful if you could forward this to others who might be interested in attending.

Hope to see you on the 26^th!

Ricarda Vidal

Alternative Worlds: A retrospective of the last 111 years

Seminar in Visual Culture 2011

Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, Room ST 274
(School of Advanced Study, Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, WC1B 5DN London)

Wednesday 26 Jan. 2011, 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Marjolaine Ryley, ‘Growing up in the New Age’

“Like yourselves we are sorry that Peter and Brigitte have chosen to ‘drop out’ of society. I respect their views but believe that society is best helped and improved from within. We must however be grateful that they have not turned to drugs, dishonesty or violence. We shall all have fewer material belongings in the future so perhaps they are preparing themselves for the world of the future.”

Sent in 1974 from my English grandparents to my Belgian grandparents this fascinating letter led me to explore my parent’s role in the now infamous activities of the 1960s and early 70s. I discovered a young couple that were searching for a true ‘alternative world’, their very own ‘utopia’, a better, simpler life outside of the mainstream and positioned within a flourishing counterculture.

‘Growing up in the New Age’ is an artist initiated research project that explores this alternative world, from communes in the south of France, squatting in South London and ‘free school’ education to the many forays into all things ‘New Age’ set against the backdrop of social and political happenings of the era.

Using a range of approaches including photography, film, writing, collecting, re-using archival materials and the web ‘Growing up in the New Age’ sets out to reconsider the social utopias of the 1960s and early 70s and what we might learn from them today. The work begins to piece together a new ‘Utopia’ an imaginary place akin to the childlike, psychedelic experiences of Alice in Wonderland, a magical but uncertain place fluctuating between a beautiful dream and a chilling nightmare.

Marjolaine is currently a Senior Lecturer in Photography and Video Art at the University of Sunderland and a practicing artist who has published and exhibited both nationally and internationally.
Websites: www.growingupinthenewage.org; www.marjolaineryley.co.uk; www.thelastpictureshow.org

Boukje Cnossen, ‘The Alternative World of Michel Houellebecq’

The work of the French novelist Michel Houellebecq is characterised by a mixture of disturbing dystopia and romanticist utopia. Throughout his oeuvre, Houellebecq 'advances a bitter critique of capitalism and advanced consumerism'.[1] He pictures the western world of the end of the twentieth century as a sinister playground for 'une génération de kids définitifs',[2] in which 'rights are no longer exclusively limited to the political and the economic'[3] and 'sexual gratification becomes almost a civic duty'.[4]

Simultaneously, Houellebecq’s characters nostalgically long for the values lost.[5] In my paper, I argue that the dynamics between this utopian romanticism on the one hand and the dystopian cynicism on the other, can be perceived through the model of a heated world, which heats up further and further, until it collapses into an eternal coldness. The science fiction world that comes into existence in Houllebecq’s 2005 novel La possibilité d'une île (The Possibility of an Island), is a world in which neo-humans hope to rest in tranquillity and nothingnes. ‘Il existe au milieu du temps / La possibilité d'une île’[6] Houellebecq writes soothingly about this alternative to a place burnt down by the extravagancies of contemporary society.

The Seminar in Visual Culture: Alternative Worlds

This series of seminars acts as a forum for practicing artists, researchers, curators, students, and others interested in visual culture who are invited to present, discuss and explore a given theme within the broad field of Visual Culture.

In an attempt to escape the doom and gloom of the economic crisis the theme for 2011 is ‘Alternative Worlds’. The aim is to examine the dreams, plans and hopes, but also the nightmares and fears reflected in utopian thinking since 1900 in the Western hemisphere. What has become of all those possible worlds? How do they reflect their contemporary culture and society and what, if anything, do or can they mean for our present, or indeed, our future? What alternative worlds are engendered by our own times, by the world of 2011 itself? This is, hence not only a retrospective of past utopias and their after-lives but also an invitation to look towards our possible futures.

The seminar is free and open to all, but please email me at [log in to unmask] to reserve a seat.

Full programme:

Wednesday 26 Jan. 2011, 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Marjolaine Ryley, ‘Growing up in the New Age’

Boukje Cnossen, ‘The Alternative World of Michel Houellebecq’

Tuesday 22 Feb. 2011, 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Maya Oppenheimer, Preserving Utopia

Barber Swindells, ‘Mothership’

Parvati Nair, ‘A different Light: Thinking the World otherwise through Sebastião Salgado’s Genesis”

Wednesday 30 March 2011, 6.30pm – 9.00pm  

Karen Pinkus, ‘Infinite Mobility, Infinite Energy: Dream Cars of the Past, Present and Future’

Sascha Pohflepp, ‘The Golden Institute’

Susanne Kord, ‘From the American Myth to the American Dream: Lone Legends and ‘Family Values’ as Alternative Worlds in Recent Hollywood Westerns’

Wednesday 27 April 2011, 6.30pm – 9.00pm  

Mark Pilkington, ‘Flying Saucers are (almost) Real - Dreaming the future from 1716 to the present’

Ingo Cornils, ‘Between Bauhaus and Bügeleisen: the iconic style of Raumpatrouille (1966)’

Rachel Steward, ‘A Science Fiction of the Present’

Wednesday 25 May 2010, 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Daniel García-Castellanos, ‘Science and Myth of other possible Mediterraneans’

Ricarda Vidal, ‘Atlantropa – 1927 to 2011’

Deborah Jaffé, ‘Utopia – Clara Louisa Wells’

Wednesday 15 June, 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Patricia Silva McNeill, ‘The last city of the future’: perspectives on Brasília in literature, film and the media

Christopher Daley, ‘The landscape is coded’: J.G. Ballard’s Early Fiction and Visual Culture

Elena Solomides, ‘JG Ballard’s High-Rise as a critique of modern living’